Football Americas

September 12 – Relevent Sports, the promoter of the International Champions Cup which is building a business on taking international clubs to play in the US, has filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the US Soccer Federation (USSF).

September 5 – The Reggae Girlz have had enough. In a payment dispute with the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF), the Jamaican national women’s team say they will refuse to train or play until the players receive what the JFF owns them.

September 5 – Concacaf has confirmed that its Nations League – that kicks off its inaugural full edition during the current international window – will be the qualification pathway for the 2021 Gold Cup.

August 29 – The second third tier US professional league opens for business this weekend when Oakland Roots meet California United Strikers in the National Independent Soccer Association (NISA) inaugural 2019 fall season.

August 28 – Broadcast group Mediapro, that has been putting down roots in Canadian football this year, has acquired the rights to the 2019-20 Concacaf Nations League which will air on the OneSoccer digital platform dedicated to Canadian football.

August 21 – Concacaf has moved swiftly to relocate two Concacaf League round of 16 matches scheduled to be played in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, to the northern city of San Pedro Sula following fan violence at the weekend that saw three at least three people were killed and 10 injured, three critically.

August 19 – The US women’s national team may hold the attention and hearts of the nation but their women’s professional league has never enjoyed anything like the same profile. A new deal with ESPN could be a step towards changing that.

August 15 – Mediation talks aimed at securing a better pay deal for female players in the United States are over according to the players who say they will now go to court amid an increasingly bitter war of words.

August 14 – When Jeff Webb was president of Concacaf he was always a pretty cool cat – approachable, friendly, always reasonable, nice guy to be around and pretty generous with it. Since his US Justice Department indictment in 2015 on corruption chrages he has needed all of a cat’s nine lives to stave off sentencing.

August 13 – Kate Markgraf has been appointed general manager of the US women’s team and will immediately lead the search for a new head coach following Jill Ellis’ announcement last month that she is stepping down following the country’s World Cup victory last month.